“For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In loveHe predestined us for adoption to sonship through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will…” Eph. 1:4-5 (NIV)

This week I have been writing about the second of three God-placed needs within us…our need for identity and worth. God placed that need within us so that we would seek Him as the source of our identity and worth.

So far I’ve mentioned how we are made in the image of God, and how Peter tells us that we are God’s special possession. In today’s verse, Paul gives us another insight into our true identity in Jesus Christ.

We are sons and daughters of the Creator of the universe.

Yet, this fact often fails to truly impact us.

That’s because we have fallen into the temptation of drawing our worth from something other than being a son or daughter of the Creator.

I wrote yesterday about how we are drawn to satisfy our need for identity and worth through what we do. Instead of our doing arising out of our relationship to the Lord, it becomes the source of our identity and worth.

Another false way we attempt to increase our worth is through what we buy. We develop the mindset that our worth is tied to our possessions.

This mindset influences the brands we buy and how often we replace our “things”. We are driven to purchase certain brands because of their status rather than their function. It’s so very subtle that we hardly even think about it.

In order to gain shalom with ourselves, we must learn to satisfy our God-placed needs in the manner that God meant them to be satisfied…through Him. That means actively going to Him with our thirst for worth and asking Him to satisfy that thirst by revealing to our hearts our true worth in Him.

We are special children of the creator of the universe. There is no amount of doing or possessing that even comes close to the true worth we have already been given in Jesus Christ. That identity and worth belong to us now…throughout the rest of eternity!